Revisited: Zygna & Social Gaming

As you remember from the first article on social gaming along with the impact that it will have in 2009 and in the future, I introduced one of the major player, .

Well, Zygna and social gaming is back now in the spotlight as they are featured in the November 30th issue of Time magazine with the article “Troubling Rise of Facebook’s Top Game Company“. This article offers some very interesting insights about both the company and the social gaming environment. The is also an interesting tibit on how social gaming can have some security issues and flaws from an insider’s prespective.

It is interesting to note from the article that experiences and failure of founder of Mark Pincus, 43, and the work that is required to start a social gaming company. Also for Zynga, in terms of social gaming- Ads and virtual goods- bring in most of the revenue. But because people who play free games on the Internet like the free part, Zynga needed a third income stream–product come-ons. These offers are like ads, except that when you click on them, you’re agreeing to try and then buy a company’s service in exchange for game points. Read more

Great Introduction: To The World of Social Media

Here is a video, which I came across while take a social media marketing class at UCLA. This has great introductions and examples to the world of social media.

Please share with me your thoughts!

2009: The Year of Social Gaming

If 2007 was considered the year of social networking then 2009 and now 2010 must be the year of social gaming. The ever increasing worldwide popularity of Apple’s iPhone and mobile functionality of Facebook along with the release of the Google Android has allowed consumers to instantly use their mobile platforms to download games and interact with many of millions of worldwide gamers on the go, which shows an explosive growth towards social networks and games on those platforms. Facebook has played a major role in the increased presence of social gaming where it has made games a popular category and as of today, the top 10 facebook games has accounted for over 260 million active monthly users including such games as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Pet Society and RestaurantCity.

Within the past 24 hours, two of the leading social gaming companies and Facebook application developers, Zynga and RockYou have received additional rounds of financing and this comes off the big news last week when Electronic Arts (ERTS) acquired social gaming company, Playfish for $300 million. The $375 million that was used to acquire and further finance these social gaming companies shows a shift between traditional console gaming towards social and digital gaming. Read more